If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?

- David Hilbert

The tool which serves as intermediary between theory and practice, between thought and observation, is mathematics; it is mathematics which builds th…

- David Hilbert

Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.

- David Hilbert

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific resul…

- David Hilbert

No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stan…

- David Hilbert

Begin with the simplest examples.

- David Hilbert

Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

- David Hilbert

Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

- David Hilbert

Mathematics is a presuppositionless science. To found it I do not need God, as does Kronecker, or the assumption of a special faculty of our understa…

- David Hilbert